Most Welcome Injection of European Culture to the Back Bay (Tie): Vlora and La Voile
Vlora (545 Boylston Street, Boston, 617.638.9699) earns praise for bringing the almost surreal vibe of a Tiranian nightclub on weekends with its crowd of pretty, wildly primped young Albanian ex-pats and its perfectly simple Mediterranean-inspired cuisine. La Voile (261 Newbury Street, Boston, 617.587.4200) gets props for demonstrating — via extraordinary Provençal and Niçoise food, and comically frenetic yet somehow efficient gallic service — that Newbury street is capable of sustaining at least one really good restaurant.
Most Likely to Become Your Next Home Away from Home: Hungry Mother
A comfy, unassuming air suffuses every room. You’re on a first-name basis with the owners. There’s, uh, reading material in the bathroom. Either you’re at home or at Hungry Mother (233 Cardinal Madeiros Avenue, Cambridge, 617.499.0090). Only one way to find out which: how fast can you whip up some catfish pâté? Not very, you say? How about grits with house-cured ham, or a jigger of rye with Dr. Pepper and bitters? No? That’s what we thought. Welcome to Chez Alon, Rachel, Barry, and John — now just pull up a chair and let down your hair.
Age Before Beauty Award For Amateur Restaurant Reviewing: to the Regulars on the Boston Board of chowhound.com
They aren’t as hip, young, or numerous as the denizens of competing Web site yelp.com, but they’re arguably more passionate and literate about food, and indisputably less likely to inject quotidian, off-point details about themselves into their reviews. Case in point: local Chowhounds discovered and evangelized Angela’s Café in East Boston, helping to establish the most exciting new Mexican restaurant to hit Boston in years, without once mentioning how it compares to the food they had in Cancun on spring break.
Win dinner on us! Text FEED, followed by a space, followed by the name of your favorite restaurant, to 22122.
